Over the past year we’ve spent a lot of time talking about different issues that we feel are important. This week we’d like to do something different. We’d like to tell you a little bit about ourselves to give you a glimpse into our world. What is it like to be a columnist? What are some of the pitfalls along the way? What mistakes do you have to make in order to recognize them? What is our motivation?
All year we have been in pursuit of something. Call it a silly dream, but we prefer to think of it as a lofty ideal; something to aspire to. The perfect column: it hasn’t exactly been a conscious orientation. But it is something we have spent sleepless nights contemplating, at first unknowingly and then with growing awareness. Gazing off rusty balconies with a thousand-mile stare. Watching restless clouds scurrying along the horizon. Bearing silent witness as autumn leaves fall and decay.
Actually, that’s not really right at all. We have been searching for something, but only in that transitory sense where you’re bent over your laptop, and your head jerks up as you realize that something is on the tip of your tongue but you can’t find the words to express it. Being a columnist isn’t easy. There is a certain sense of entitlement, initially. You’ve been given a privileged position, but you learn to shed this kind of attitude as soon as possible. There will always be someone to come along and do whatever you’re doing at least 10 times better.
It’s important to remember this. No matter how many times the point is driven home, people tend to forget it. Entitlement is painful to witness, almost as painful as student commentators’ frequently passionate, but pathetic, displays of self-assumed superiority. We’re sick of the vapid, blog-derived content that gets pumped out in place of genuine, well-researched material. We will not stand for this self-righteous hijacking of campus publications in the name of free speech.
What the hell are we supposed to do when it is so easy to become pigeonholed? So easy to be misconstrued? The most important thing to remember is to be honest. This sounds easy to do, but trust us, it’s quite difficult. How do we know that you will read this and be able to make sense of it? Appreciate what we’re trying to show when we’re trying show it, understand what is ironic and what isn’t? There is so much uncertainty. It creeps under your skin, makes you second guess yourself. It distracts you from the pursuit of the perfect column.
What are its ingredients? Maybe something that stands alone, or makes a suitably interesting point that can be eloquently framed in one or two lines: There is absolutely nothing of substance here. By forcing you think around in circles, we are trying to make it sound like there is some conclusion. There is none.
But when you’re hunched over your keyboard, with half an hour to go before the deadline, there is only one thing that matters. What do you want to say? If you’re sitting there writing then there must be something that is struggling to emerge. The perfect column is fantasy. The perfect column is myth. The perfect column is something you can feel between heartbeats, something that animates, guides, and appears for a transitory moment. You have to hold your breath. There it is. Then it disappears.
